


watch this little trick of mine

by erlkoenig



Series: glass animals [1]
Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls Online
Genre: Body Horror, M/M, Necromancy, Pre-Slash, Set during the Colovian Revolt and Longhouse Emperors rule, slight canon divergence and pure self-indulgent nonsense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-08 03:36:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21229151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erlkoenig/pseuds/erlkoenig
Summary: Varen’s voice sounds far away, and as Mannimarco slips out of his grasp the moment is gone.





	watch this little trick of mine

No one knows what hole Varen pulled him out of, and there wasn’t really time to ask back then. 

_ “Can he fight?” _ Lyris had asked, dragging the whetstone across the edge of her axe. Abnur had snickered, but really, that gave them nothing. 

_ “In his own way.”  _ Varen said, and no one questioned it aloud.

Sorcerer, battlemage, the titles changed so suit the mood but one look at the fucking skull on the end of his bladed staff told everyone to keep their heads down and their mouths shut. 

_ “Varen’s made a deal with a devil.”  _ It was whispered through the camp and it was only a matter of time before it made its rounds to the mer, the myth, the motherfucker himself. 

_ “A devil?”  _ Mannimarco had laughed, lit a rolled cigarette and let it smolder.  _ “Haven’t heard that one since Artaeum. Like putting on an old pair of shoes.” _

Sai didn’t care much for what he was or was not, so long as he could swing that staff as well as he could sling magic.  _ “An exhausted mage is a liability.” _

On the field he keeps a distance, and Sai finds himself falling back more than once, always a step too late when the earth splits and his vision goes grey while his mind races to make sense of what he’s seeing.

He dreams of milk-white hands clawing at the ground, the wind rushing around him in a frenzied scream. 

No one talks about it. 

The sun beats down on bloated bodies and somewhere over all of the dying they can hear crows waiting to feast. White-Gold Tower is closer than it has ever been and the earth all around is a bloodied swamp. Muscles tense, exhausted, but something pushes past him, hollow-eyed and whispering terrible things that turns his blood to ice water in his veins.

When he looks back, Mannimarco rolls his limp neck — Sai thinks he can hear the bones crack and slide — and a hundred sleeping bodies rise, joints pulled by strings that jerk and release with each rattling breath the necromancer takes. 

_ Quickly, quickly, said the bird; mankind cannot take very much reality.  _

Lyris’ axe breaks through the heavy, barred doors and Varen throws himself into the splinters, armor like a pocket full of coins, shaking shaking shaking. 

His hands are —

_ shaking shaking shaking _

wrapped tight around his sword but he waits until Mannimarco lurches behind him, spits blood on the ground to join the rest,  _ I was here _ ,  _ too. _ Their eyes meet for a moment and then they are —

_ shaking  _

falling into the dark, feet dragging them through the ruins and into the Tower.

Everything is a blur of noise and color, light and dark and bright electric fire that crackles over his skin and stings his eyes. If he keeps close to the battlemage — sorcerer, necromancer,  _ Mannimarco  _ — it’s because no one else would dare. 

It’s over before the adrenaline runs dry. Someone screams, they all scream, and Sai blinks lightning from his sight and reaches, half-blind, curls his fingers around a wrist and pulls, feels the other let himself be pulled and there’s a blood lust humming behind his teeth, there’s blood smeared across the elf’s mouth and he wants — for a wild, wicked moment — to lick it away. 

Varen’s voice sounds far away, and as Mannimarco slips out of his grasp the moment is gone. 


End file.
